Final entry!

Throughout the duration of this course, I learned a lot about the freelancing process and lifestyle, writing for publication, and tailoring pieces to be sellable.

I was pretty pleased with my performance in this course. I feel that the pieces I wrote and revised were nearly publication-worthy by their final drafts. I really enjoyed doing the piece on wine because I got to learn more about wine and talk about it with others, which was fun. I also enjoyed doing research about Lansing City Market. I probably would have never gone there had it not been for the Capital Gains assignment.

What I found to be most difficult in this course was tailoring articles to have a more pronounced, distinct hook that is appropriate for the context it will be published in. I still have a hard time identifying and perfecting a hook, but I now have techniques I can use to develop a hook. Examining the audience demographic of a publication often leads to ideas that can be integrated into a potential hook in order to make an article more specific to a magazine.

I learned that research isn’t easy. There are either a ton of sources, or only a few sources, and finding the information you need, by either sorting through a glut of information or trying to find any information at all, can be challenging. I learned to give myself more time¬—for everything. Researching, developing a hook, drafting, editing, revising, and polishing all took more time than I thought they would for all of the assignments. I also learned that if I’m running late for a deadline, it’s better to tell the editor that I’m running late and give them an expected completion time than to just submit it as soon as possible. Everyone likes to be in the know.
I learned that I’m not as good of a writer as I thought. My sentences and word choice are great, but I have real issues trying to organize information and develop an argument. As soon as I know what I want to say and in what order to convey the information, I’m okay; but until that happens, I find myself just free-writing and then reorganizing sentences to “make them fit.” I feel a “success” of this class was identifying this problem, but a “failure” is realizing that I still have this problem and I’m not quite sure how to make it better. I often solicit the ideas of others in order to remedy this problem, but I feel I need to find better strategies and techniques in order to prevent this issue from occurring.

I really enjoyed reading my classmates’ work and discussing with them different aspects of their writing style, angle, hooks, and organization. I think that this exposure to pieces written by different authors will serve me well when I am editing in the future. I also enjoyed learning about the subject matter my classmates wrote about.

The most important thing I learned from this class was the process of freelancing. I had no idea how to pitch articles, write them, or sell them. This information will be very useful to me as I pursue freelancing projects in the future, which seems to be the path I may be taking after graduation. =)

The Big Boy scene

After we all had finished eating, I waited for my mom to go to the bathroom to wash her hands. At restaurants, she always washed her hands before and after every meal in the restaurant bathroom.

“I’m going to go to the ladies’ room to wash my hands. Anyone else want to come with?” my mom advertised.

“I’ll go with you,” my sister said. I slid down the bench so she could get out.

“You’re not going?” she asked me.

“Not yet, I’m gonna finish my pancakes,” I replied, smiling.

“You girls sure can eat!” my grandma said as she stood to go to the bathroom with my mom and sister.

The waitress sauntered back to our table. Holding the black folder in her hand, she looked at my dad, then to my grandpa, and then back to my dad.

“Who do I give this to?” she asked.

“Give it here,” my grandpa bellowed, his low voice and white hair attesting to his authority.

“No, no, no,” my dad protested, reaching over the table and snatching the folder out of the waitress’s hand before she could pass it off to my grandpa.

“Let me get the bill, David.”
“Nope. I got it,” my dad replied, reaching for his wallet.

I quietly shoveled forkfuls of cold pancakes into my mouth. There was too much syrup; they were too soggy and too sweet. I gulped my ice water. It was my third glass. Bready things like pancakes don’t come up easily if you don’t drink enough with them.

“Wow, are you gonna be in the clean plate club, Bee?” my dad joked. He was always telling my sister and I to clean our plates, but especially at restaurants, this rarely happened.

“Yeah, looks like it. Except for that white bacon fat. But that doesn’t count,” I replied. “Ready?” I asked my dad, raising my eyebrows, smiling, scooping up the last bite of pancakes with my fork. As I raised it, the syrupy mush started to fall through the tines. I quickly put it in my mouth and swallowed it, erasing the disgustingly sweet taste with mouthful after mouthful of freezing water.

“Way to go, Bee!” he said, putting his hand across the table, waiting for me to high-five him. I gave him a strong high five as I continued drinking, and saw my mom, sister, and grandma coming back to the table. I scooted to the edge of the bench and grabbed my purse.

“I’m a member of the clean plate club,” I pseudo-bragged to my sister as I passed her en route to the ladies’ room. She laughed.

I pushed opened the door to the room, and was immediately hit with the fake smell of industrial hand soap. I hated that smell. The yellow fluorescent lights hummed as the door fell shut behind me. I opted for the handicapped stall since it was slightly farther from the door than the other stall, and there would be less chance of anyone seeing my feet, which would be facing the wrong way if anyone walked in. I closed and locked the door, hanging my purse on the hook above the lock.

I walked over to the toilet and ripped some single-ply toilet paper off of the roll, covering the water’s surface with it. I tucked my pinky and ring finger with my thumb as I moved my hand toward my mouth. My hand smelled and tasted like maple syrup. I felt my epiglottis with my first two fingers. It was kind of hard—the cartilage kind of hard—but smooth, wet, and warm. Touching it made my throat feel scratchy. Perfect. I started to rub the flap with my fingertips, reaching deeper into my throat until my stomach heaved. I crouched over the toilet, still standing, as watered-down pancakes and bile poured over my hand and into the water, making a plopping noise as if I had simply dropped an apple in it. I kept rubbing my epiglottis, heaving, and coughing, spewing the very watery contents of my stomach into the toilet. When I couldn’t breathe, I pulled my vomit-covered hand out of my mouth and coughed until I could inhale again. And then I would reach back down my throat. I felt the little chunks of bacon shooting up my esophagus. I looked down and saw the pale and tiny pieces of light yellow scrambled eggs. Everything came back up in the opposite order that I ate it in, though everything was mixed, mashed, mush. I kept putting my hand down my throat until I heaved and heaved, but nothing came out. That’s when I knew I was done. Tears leaked out of the corners of my eyes, but I wasn’t sad; I was proud. Think of all of the hard work those calories would have erased. I felt satisfied, confident, physically exhausted. I used some toilet paper to wipe the vomit off of my hand and the toilet seat. I used some more to dab at my teary eyes, and to blow my nose, which was now also full of vomit. No more industrial hand soap smell; now everything reeked of bile and syrup. I looked at myself in the mirror as I washed my hands. There was a piece of semi-digested pancake that had splashed out of the toilet in my hair. I picked it out. The pre-puke toilet paper usually prevented most of that.

I grabbed the lever on the paper towel dispenser and pulled it down a few times as my sister walked in.

“Almost ready to go?” she said.

I ripped the paper towel from the dispenser. “Yup!” I affirmed, and smiled at her.
“You okay? Your eyes are kind of red. I just noticed.” My sister raised a concerned, well-manicured eyebrow.

“I’m fine. I just didn’t sleep well last night,” I replied to her. She knew it was true: I had had insomnia for a while now.

“Aww, I’m sorry, Woo,” she comforted me, wrapping her arms around my thin waist.

“It’s okay,” I said, confidently, upbeat. I tossed the paper towel in the trash. “I’m getting used to it.”

Write out full scene // 2 pages // 300-400 words // bring for Thursday

At Big Boy in Manistee with my grandparents, mom, dad, and sister, throwing up.

Storyboard:
Time & place: A Big Boy restaurant in my grandparents' town.
Weather: Fluorescent lighting, a little cold, as restaurants often are
Sounds: Dishes and silverware clinking, people eating, small talk, servers talking, cooks yelling, repeated lines of conversation due to my grandpa's bad hearing, patrons talking, toilets flushing, the sound of dispensing paper towels, bathroom sinks running water
Smells: pancakes, coffee, bacon, industrial bathroom soap, industrial bathroom cleaner
Props: Dirty plates, glasses, coffee mugs, my purse, my mom's purse, my sister's purse.
Characters/relationships: Grandma & Grandpa, Mom, Dad, Sarah (sister)
Action: Small talk after dinner, waiting for bill, waiting for grandma & mom to leave bathroom, Bethany goes to bathroom and makes herself throw up
Subjects of dialogue: Myself, Sarah, everyone else at dinner conversation
Subtext of dialogue: Bethany says she's fine, but is lying; she's really very mentally ill

Tyranny of the Test

Tyranny Response:
[1. What are the focusing questions?
2. How are scenes used? (What do you "see"?)
3. How are research/editorializing used? (Elements of literary journalism include scene/narrative, research, and editorializing)]

In Tyranny of the Test, Jeremy Miller focuses on a few things, including (1) how the No Child Left Behind Act has affected students, teachers & school staff, and test-prep companies such as Kaplan and The Princeton Review; (2) how test-prep companies affect students, teachers & school staff, and test-prep companies; and (3) how testing procedures affect students, teachers & school staff, and test-prep companies.

Miller uses scene to provide the reader a concrete image of what he dealt with on a day-to-day basis as a Kaplan coach in different schools. His descriptions of the schools themselves, the students, the teachers, and what he experienced give the reader a clear picture of the kinds of impoverished communities in which Kaplan is employed, the kinds of personalities he dealt with, and the discourse between students, teachers, and Kaplan coaches. Miller uses scene to personify different elements of the issues he is examining, and follows the scene with a more encompassing narrative and editorial. The author uses research in combination with editorial to prove the existence of a larger trend or phenomenon. Narrative and scene allow the writer to express more specifically what this trend or phenomenon may look like on a more personal level.

Writing Surrogate Experiences

[Come up with three possible article ideas]

-Nutritionally balanced sandwiches for different scenarios.
i.e. The PB & J with more/less protein, turkey sandwiches that pump up the iron, getting more vitamin C with your pastrami on rye.
-Different workout regimens that all target the same muscle group.
-An article that discusses how to help friends and family members who have eating disorders.

Three experiences that could be associated with one of the possible article ideas:

-Sneaking in a quick, nutritionally balanced meal before delivering a successful presentation at work
-Finally being able to bench your goal weight, while someone is watching
-Saving your friend from succumbing to an eating disorder

Using either first person ("I" = writer), second person ("you" = reader), or third person ("he"/"she" = interview subject), recreate this experience in one paragraph

....these ideas are all terrible.

Magazine analysis

[Using a magazine, a website, and writersmarket.com identify the community and self-identity of the magazine's readership and identify a surrogate experience for the magazine.]

Women's Health:
Community: 20- to 50-year-old women, mostly heterosexuals, who enjoy nutrition, health, exercise, and cooking.

Self-identity: These women are independent self-motivators who are interested in exercise and nutrition for the sake of their health.

Surrogate experience: making a great dinner for a significant other, losing weight due to an effective training regimen, getting a sculpted body.

Project #1 Debrief

Evaluate your final draft. What are the strengths and weaknesses of it? What was difficult? What will you do differently next time?

My final draft was okay. I was pleased with the information given, but I felt the hook was still weak. It didn't really have an angle that was appropriate for Capital Gains; it was more of just a piece about Lansing City Market (LCM). I also had problems organizing the piece. I didn't know how to structure the paragraphs in a logical order, and I couldn't decide which order was most logical or progressive. I should have decided on a more specific angle before going to interview people at LCM, instead of developing a hook based on the information I discovered.